


Wittgensteinian

by kylee



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylee/pseuds/kylee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the possibility of a private language. (Written in 2010.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wittgensteinian

"What was that about, then?" Guildenstern asks, arms crossed and expectant.

"What? When?"

 _Focus, please_ , is what he'd like to say -- but better to get to the point of focus. "'The most private, secret, intimate thing you have ever done, secure in the knowledge of its privacy,'" he quotes, with clear derision, as though the words are as distasteful to him as the man who spoke them. "For as long as we can remember -- however long that is -- we've been in one another's company. What could you have done that I didn't know about? And if I knew about it, how could it have been private?"

"Well, you don't know _everything_ I do," Rosencrantz offers -- as though to placate, not to argue. "You don't know what I think."

"I don't know that you _do_ think."

"Do I?"

"Indeed." Guildenstern sighs. "Very well, then -- every man is a mental island. Come meet me by raft. What were you thinking of?"

Hair over his face, Rosencrantz chews on it and considers. It's a terrible habit -- Guildenstern is tempted to reach over and yank the hair from his mouth but he's not irritated enough, yet. He almost is when Rosencrantz finally says, "I can't tell you."

"With everything _they_ keep from us, what's the use of our keeping secrets from one another? "

"It's not that it's secret, exactly." He does have the decency to look sheepish; Guildenstern will give him that. He even swipes the fair out of his face. "I'd like to tell you -- but I can't. I can't get it to translate."

"Translate? Were you thinking in German? I believe I can understand German."

"Not German, no. I was thinking _thoughts_. But I was thinking _my_ thoughts -- I think. I don't know if there are words to make them your thoughts ... or if there are words, they might be _my_ words, and I can't make them yours, then, can I?"

"Nothing is in principle incommunicable. _Uncommunicated_ , yes, while we struggle at expression, but if we struggle long enough, we should find it -- or safely strike what can't be expressed from our linguistic ontology." That's obviously not _quite_ the right expression, because Rosencrantz is looking at him like it's German. "Suppose I have a box," Guildenstern says, and tents his hands as though to indicate a box, but he might just be speaking with his hands. He does that. "Suppose I have a beetle in this box."

"Can I see it?" It seems Rosencrantz takes the tented-hands to be a box, because he's leaning down and peering into them (and getting his hair in his face again).

"By stipulation, no. The box is such that there's no seeing into it unless you're already inside it, much like the human mind. But, if you like, you can ask me questions about the beetle."

"Are you pretending to be Hamlet, then?" Rosencrantz thinks he remembers something about a nutshell.

"No." There's a pause. "Not necessarily." A longer pause. "Do go on -- ask."

Practically bouncing back on the heels of his feet, Rosencrantz straightens up, looks up for a question -- if they're going to play a _game_ \-- "What color is its shell?"

"Indescribably colored."

"How many antennae does it have?"

"Indefinitely many."

"What's its name?"

"Its name is unspeakable, and must be passed over in silence."

"Is it selling toffee apples?"

"What? How? It's a _beetle_."

" _Is_ it a beetle?"

"Yes, it's a --" This is a trick. "Don't get cute."

Rosencrantz does not stop getting cute.

"It's an indescribably colored, unspeakably named beetle with indefinite antennae, that might be selling toffee apples, but if it were, I couldn't tell you how or who to. So what do I have in this box?"

Beaming, expecting to be told he's won, Rosencrantz announces, "You have a beetle!"

" _No_ ," Guildenstern corrects him, definitively. "I have nothing in this box."

"But --"

His tented fingers collapse. "A beetle in a box is no better than no beetle at all."

That _sounds_ right. No, not right -- it sounds familiar. "Can't we give it a name? For conversation's sake. Like Guildenstern."

" _I_ am Guildenstern."

"Are you? I thought you were Hamlet."

"I was never --" What's the use? "Never mind. Keep your secrets. We should have them, if they're what distinguishes us from one another. If the only thing we had to go on was what they called us, we'd be lost; with privacy, we have hope for individuality."

It doesn't seem like much of a hope. And just then, Rosencrantz is at the edge of _something_ \-- he can't put words to it because it's still half-formed, and he doesn't know whether it's imagination or memory. The colors are vague, and the shapes and the sounds. But there is a name.

 _It's you. I'm always thinking of you._

But Guildenstern has already moved on.

Well. He'll know better next time.


End file.
